


Build a House or Sink a Dead Body

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Dirty Talk, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Future Fic, Pregnancy Kink, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 14:31:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11128776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: Laurel decides she wants a baby. Frank is down.Cue the inevitable. Lots of it.





	Build a House or Sink a Dead Body

**Author's Note:**

> Something else I’m gonna refuse to take responsibility for and blame on the Flaurel gc… but also something I had a shitton of fun writing because this is a fun kink to write, and mix in a bit of fluffy tenderness and you get… this.
> 
> Title comes from Judas by Lady Gaga (aka a masterpiece), from the line that says, “I’ve learned love is like a brick you can / Build a house or sink a dead body.” Frank and Laurel do the first one, obvi. 
> 
> Enjoy hoes.

Laurel pounces the instant he steps through the door.

No words. No greeting. No smile. No cordial _hi honey how was your day_. He’s barely even opened his mouth before he finds himself greeted by Laurel’s hands and Laurel’s arms and Laurel’s lips and then _all_ of Laurel, all five feet and four inches of her slamming him up against the wall with a surprising amount of force and seizing his mouth with hers. It’s all fast and hot and ravenously hungry, a predator and her unsuspecting prey who really, if he’s being honest, is more than happy to be her prey, to be eaten alive, devoured whole. Her movements are calculated in their haste; it’s clear she’s been waiting for him, waiting for the right moment to strike.

And – well, Frank’s not complaining. Mostly, he’s just confused as hell.

“Well,” he manages to sputter, prying her off him only long enough to breathe out, “hello to you too, _dear_.”

Laurel glowers, and it’s more adorable than it is menacing, really, the way her brows pull together, the way her eyes darken in the ominous way storm clouds roll over the sun. She’s clad in a pencil skirt and teal waterfall blouse from work, hair messy, makeup faded from the long day, but she doesn’t look tired. If anything, her alertness is almost threatening, how awake and honed-in on him she seems, razor-sharp and resolute and intent on getting what she wants – which, Frank thinks, she’s made pretty goddamn clear.

Sometimes she gets like this, horny for no reason, jumping his bones at the drop of a hat. It’s the opposite of a problem, really, but a good boyfriend would at least try to discern the cause of it before handing over his dick to her without question, and so Frank resolves to do just that.

“What took you so long?” she grumbles, and before he knows it her hands are yanking at his suit jacket, peeling it off, lithe fingers unbuttoning his waist and parting it down the middle, before giving a growl of frustration when she finds herself thwarted by the undershirt beneath. “God, why the hell do you wear so many layers?”

Frank lets her shuck his jacket, not quite sure what to make of her, of her quick, methodic movements as she strips him, her seriousness about it all, like there’s a countdown timer to the apocalypse ticking away and she needs to fuck him before it hits zero.

“One – Annalise is a cruel mistress, you know that. And two-” Something snaps – probably one of his buttons – and hits the floor. If he weren’t so preoccupied with the feeling of her hands roaming his body, he might grumble about having to sew that back on, but he thinks he’d be a fucking fool right now to complain about anything. So he relaxes, instead, giving her one of his wry grins that he knows will send her fury sailing to new heights. “Well, guess I had to slow you down somehow, didn’t I?”

“Why,” she breathes hot into his ear, “can’t you just be like everyone else and wear _normal_ suits?”

“Gimme a heads-up next time you want me naked stat,” he teases, as Laurel shimmies her way out of her skirt and he works at his belt. “I’ll be ready to drop my pants the second I walk in the door. Dick on demand.”

That finally gets a laugh out of her, just as Laurel’s skirt goes tumbling to the floor, crumpling around her ankles before she steps out of it, kicking it away and walking back over to him in just her panties and blouse, flushed from head to toe, hair threatening to tumble out of its messy bun. She pulls it out with one hasty tug, giving her head a shake and letting her hair fall around her shoulders, the first few buttons on her blouse undone and threatening to let her breasts spill out of it – and fuck, it’s times like these he just has to take a step back, press pause, and contemplate how completely, ridiculously, stupidly _lucky_ he is.

Laurel isn’t about to let him press pause right now, though, and so he catches her before she can move in again, determined to slow her down somehow, tap the brakes, because after four years of dating they’re beyond this, beyond fucking out their feelings and using only their bodies to communicate.

“Hey,” he rasps, catching her before she can move in again, voice low. He reaches up, tucking a few wayward strands of hair behind her ear. “Slow down for a sec. You okay?”

Something flickers in Laurel’s eyes, those blue waters which churn like rapids with need now, but it’s there and gone in seconds, and finally she softens, her shoulders drooping, all that impatience flooding out of her. She lets out a breath, and he places a hand on her hip, fingering absentmindedly at the lace trimming on her panties, breathing her in, letting _her_ breathe him in. Sometimes she’s a bit like a rocketship hurtling out of the atmosphere, wild and untamed and travelling faster than the speed of light, and he helps bring her back into earth’s gravity, reminds her how to be still.

“I’m good,” she says, and offers him the first genuine smile he’s seen from her, exposing the pearls of her teeth. “I, uh… I’m just really glad you’re home.”

_Home_. He never gets tired of hearing her say that, hearing her call their apartment home, knowing she thinks of this life they’ve managed to build together as her _home_ , when he knows she’s been starved of a real home most of her life, first by her father and then by those tumultuous, bloody years at school. They came out on the other side of that, by some miracle. Managed to get back to some semblance of normal. Managed to find a home – and it isn’t these four walls she’s referring to, he knows that. These four walls mean nothing, ultimately. This place could burn to the ground around them tomorrow and Frank wouldn’t so much as shed a tear, because _she’s_ his home, his hearth, his four walls and his warm bed at night, and anywhere she is… That’s his home.

He can’t remember when he got so goddamn sentimental. Probably started the day he fell in love with her.

Frank grins, pressing his lips onto hers softly, barely a whisper of a kiss. “Me too. Now…” He gives a sweep of his arms, gesturing to the few garments still cloaking his body. “Feel free to continue.”

Laurel laughs, full-chested and free, when he reaches out, tangling her in his arms and reversing their positions, pressing her against the wall instead. “I hate you.”

“Yeah, well. I love you,” he replies, easily, the words falling from his lips by habit, and she lights up when he does, gleaming so bright it’s almost hard to look at her.

Her kisses are hot, heavy. They have a tang of desperation in them; he doesn’t know how long she’s been waiting, but judging by the wet spot he can feel forming in her panties, the sweat that beaded on her brow long before he stepped inside the door, he figures it must be a while. It never feels like he sees her enough, these days, with her mostly normal hours at the PD’s office and his nights spent wasted at Annalise’s, perpetually on-call whenever the woman decides she needs him, a dog to its master.

They gorge themselves on each other whenever they can, desperate, starved for one another’s attention. Frank had been so sure, after all these years, that eventually that fire of wanting would die down, turn to a bed of slowly-smoldering embers, but he finds that it rages like wildfire still, that it’s never stopped growing; that he still wants her with the same fierceness he did the night they met, even after all these years. That’s not to say their love is easy – because it isn’t; it takes work. It’s a choice they make over and over, to stay together, to work at this and love each other, and he’ll keep choosing her.

He can’t imagine _not_ choosing her. She’s the only option there’s ever been.

They abandon the task of stripping each other; Frank figures that, upon weighing the costs and benefits, there’s really no need to. It’ll cost them time, and there won’t be a whole hell of a lot of benefits, because they can manage sex with clothes; after working together at Annalise’s they’d become masters of the half-clothed bathroom quickie. So he reaches into his pocket, never moving his mouth away from hers, and tugs out his wallet, fumbling with it before his fingers locate a small foil packet. By then Laurel is already tugging down his zipper, freeing his cock and wrapping her little fingers around it, giving him a firm pump, and suddenly he can’t remember what it feels like _not_ to be hard.

He rips the packet open. And that’s when Laurel bats his hand away.

“No,” she breathes, shaking her head. “Want you bare.”

Immediately, he freezes; Laurel isn’t one to be reckless like this, at least not willfully. She’d learned her lesson years ago and has insisted on safety ever since, though he won’t deny they’ve forgotten condoms in their haste, at times. They’re only human. Only hot-blooded. They make mistakes. But Laurel sure as hell doesn’t make mistakes like this on purpose, and so he pulls back, equal parts breathless and bewildered.

“Huh?”

“I stutter?” She gives an insistent tug on his cock. “I want you bare.”

“Wh-”

“I went off the pill.”

Wait. _Wait._

“Hold up,” he blurts out, the flow of electricity in his body cut all at once, like flipping off a breaker in a fuse box. “What? The hell do you mean you went off the pill?”

She cocks her head to one side, amused. “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

She went off the pill. She wants him to fuck her without a condom. Connect the dots and you can only draw one logical conclusion, and Frank feels almost dizzy with shock, his mind struggling to plug numbers into an equation that keeps returning an error message of _does not compute_. Because this sure as fuck _does not compute_.

It’s not like the thought hasn’t crossed his mind, over the years. They’re together and they’re stable, but after what’d happened all those years ago, the baby she’d lost before – Wes’s child, gone without warning in the middle of the night, almost entirely without pain – he’d always assumed there’d be some sort of trauma surrounding pregnancy for her, that she’d have an aversion to the idea of going through that again. That’s part of why he’d never brought up the idea to her, certain she’d only ever shoot it down – and he’s fine with that, fine with just having her, safe and sound. She’s all he needs.

For a moment, he just gapes. And finally, Laurel does him the courtesy of spelling it out for him.

“I want a baby.”

“You-” He shakes his head, thrown for a loop. All he can do is parrot the words back at her lamely. “You want a baby.”

Doubt flashes in her eyes, for a second, and she fidgets, suddenly unsure. “What, do you… do you not, or something?”

“Yeah, yeah. ’Course I do. You know I do.” The words come flying out of his mouth in a burst, clumsy but genuine, because he does. Of course he does, but all he can do is continue to gape at her. “I, uh… just, could we not have had this conversation before my dick was out, though?”

“That’s a…” She drifts off, glancing down to acknowledge its presence the way one greets an old friend. “Yeah, that’s a good point.”

Silence. And he’s not going to lie; it’s not an overly comfortable silence. Suddenly his entire vocabulary seems to have been deleted, and all he can do is stare at her like a dumbass, and Laurel seems equally unsure how to proceed, now that she’s sprung this on him when they probably should have sat down, first, and come to a mutual decision like adults. It’s not like they’re debating which place to get takeout from; this is the creation of a whole damn human. A potential baby.

_Their_ baby.

“I’m sorry,” Laurel says, finally, taking the condom from him and turning it over in her hands, considering it. “I should’ve told you, before. I didn’t… think I knew how to say it.”

“You want this, though?” he presses, gently, moving in closer. “You’re sure?”

She nods. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I’m in a good place at work. You and me… we’re in a good place. It just feels…” A smile plays at her lips; tiny, but hopeful. “It feels right.” She gives him a look, as if realizing something, out of the blue. “Do you? Want this, I mean?”

The question gives him pause, even though he does. He wants it, now, and the wanting hits him like a punch in the gut, sudden and paralyzing, but it occurs to him that he’s wanted it for a long, long time; probably long before it’d even crossed her mind. He wants a child with her, and perhaps the most striking thing is that _she_ wants a child with _him_ , that she’s decided she trusts him enough for this, wants to do this with him – not anyone else in the world. _Him_.

But however much he might want to, he knows there are a million reasons why he shouldn’t. Because of the things he’s done, the blood of the children that layers his hands, heavy and thick, like a second skin he can never shed. Because he can, realistically, only fuck this up in every conceivable way it _can_ be fucked up. Because he’s no good and he’s fucking kidding himself to think he ever could be; good enough for a child, good enough to care for and nurture and protect that innocence. But it occurs to him that Laurel has most likely considered all those things too and decided she wants to do this with him nonetheless – because she sees something good in him, something worthy. She wouldn’t want to do this if she didn’t think he could handle it, and she believes in him, and suddenly, that’s all Frank needs to believe in _himself_.

He can do this. _They_ can. They’re in this together. They’re _stronger_ together, and he’s never particularly wanted a family, wanted children, but he wants it with her so badly now he almost can’t breathe.

“Yeah,” he says, words saturated with wide-eyed sincerity, a dazed grin tugging at his lips. “Yeah, I do.”

“Then… it’s settled,” she says. “Operation Make-a-Baby is a go?”

He pecks her on the mouth, suddenly giddy. “You betcha.”

“So,” Laurel begins, teasingly, glancing down at his cock where it stands, at full mast, forgotten momentarily but now painfully obvious. “You gonna get on with it, or-”

He does as she says. He swallows the words with a kiss.

Because damn fucking _straight_ he’s gonna get on with it.

He smoothes his hand down her stomach, dipping it into her panties, claiming his prize – and the whole world seems to stop spinning when his fingers brush her folds, because she’s wet, wetter than she should be from just kissing him; ridiculously, impossibly sopping wet, and he doesn’t have to do much investigative work to surmise she’s been like this for hours, panties damp and cunt sloppy. Nothing else would explain the slickness coating her thighs, dripping down them, the way her panties have been soaked through and probably have been for a long, long time, the way her cunt burns like a furnace when he presses the tip of one of his fingers inside, testing the waters.

She’s been like this for hours, sitting around, waiting up for him – for him to come and fuck her and spill inside her and knock her up, and that’s what he’s going to do, and suddenly the air between them shifts, grows heavier, takes on a certain weight. Suddenly that’s all he can _think_ of doing. Laurel gasps, rises up on her toes, and the arousal hits him like a kick in the head, imagining her like that: pregnant, breasts engorged and stomach swollen, ripening, full to bursting of their child, full of _him_ , the both of them. How she’d _look_. How she’d be so completely, irrevocably, irreversibly _his_.

He doesn’t know where it comes from, that primal, biological response, that need to claim her, fuck her, make her his, but he does know that it drives him fucking insane, makes his cock positively leak, and all at once he’s ravenous, looming over her like a beast, mouth mere inches from her ear as his fingers stroke her greedy cunt.

“Well, well, well,” he purrs, licking his lips, drawing another whimper out of her, “what do we got here?”

She manages a laugh. “I have to spell that out for you too?”

“Been waitin’ for me all night?” Frank continues, voice dropping into that low, raspy register that he knows makes her shiver, makes her spill down her thighs even more, unable to dam up the flow of her desire. “Wet, achin… Just waitin’ for me to come home. Fuck you slow. Fuck you good.” He removes his hand from her panties, urging her to place her feet shoulder-width apart, keeping his hands on her thighs and preventing her from rubbing them together, until she’s squirming against him, low whimpers and whines forming in the back of her throat from the lack of friction. “Fill you up, over and over. Come inside you ‘til you can’t take any more. ‘Til you’re full of me. Full of _us_. That what you’ve been waitin’ for?”

Her breath hitches, and Frank knows he’s got her. He doesn’t usually talk like this; he teases, sure, revels in dirty talk, but his words now sound more like threats, like growled promises, nothing lighthearted about them. At first he hadn’t been sure she’d be into this, into hearing him say these things though he’s said things far more depraved, but it’s some animal inside him that’s risen up and taken control of his tongue, and Laurel doesn’t seem like she’s about to file a complaint – about anything other than his lack of attention to her lower half, that is. He isn’t even really touching her at all, and she’s not one to wait around and whimper and beg very long, wait for him to make the first move. She’s a woman of action. She’ll take what she wants, sooner rather than later.

Luckily what she wants is what they _both_ want, tonight.

“What makes you think I’d let you?” Laurel teases, eyes glinting. “What makes you think you’ve earned that?”

It takes him all of 0.3 seconds to scoop her up, his hands anchored under her thighs, powerful arms lifting her up like she weighs nothing at all – and she doesn’t, not now, but by the end of all this she will, swollen and heavy and waddling and _fuck_ , fuck he doesn’t know what it is about the thought that drives him on, the thought of being the one to do that to her, but he feels insane, possessed. He feels like a beast, again; some animal giving a show of strength to attract its mate, and he surges, kissing her roughly, savagely as he brings her to the bedroom. He dumps her down onto the bed and all but attacks her remaining clothes, doing the same to his own until they’re both nude – nothing in the way. No clothing. No condom, either. This is them, just them.

This is something far deeper than just sex, than fucking. Deeper in its purpose. It feels like entire worlds hang in the balance, tonight.

Normally he’d hang back. Drink in the sight of her. The moonlight is blue and it flows over her liquid smooth, making her glow, illuminating her, and again all he can see is that fantasy of her, pregnant and glowing and so overwhelmingly full, round belly and aching breasts and supple body, all the curves of her expanded out, filled in, and all he can think of is _making_ her that way. Transforming her and watching her change, grow with the evidence of what they’ve done, until there’s no hiding it, until everyone _knows_. It’s the only thought running through his head, as he looks at her, and after a moment Laurel shifts, breasts rising and falling quickly with each heaving breath, body laid out on display before him, sprawled against a deep blue backdrop of Starry Night.

“So?” she probes, a loopy smile on her face. There’s no apprehension, in her eyes. “Gonna come here and knock me up or what?”

And he doesn’t have to answer. They both know it’s an unequivocal _fuck yes_.

“Never answered my question,” he insists, as he sinks down onto her, settling between her legs, bending them back, and placing one of his hands over her knee. He doesn’t slide inside her, at first; instead he just glides his cock across her, teasing her folds, her clit, until she’s giving little huffing breathes he can tell are stifled moans which she’s quickly losing the control to stifle at all. “That what you’ve been waitin’ for all night? Me to come knock you up?”

Her breathing is shallow. She’s moaning freely, now, and once maybe she would’ve kept those moans stifled, kept to herself just how much she wants him, but there’s no point to that, and she’s so open, below him, legs spread, his cock just a hair away from slipping inside her. He can see her face clearly through the moonlight, her half-lidded eyes, the way her expression contorts with pleasure, her kissable, swollen lips, forced open by cry after cry, wanton and filthy. She has such a rotten little look on her face, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can stand this, stand being coated in her juices but not inside her, dripping with precome, dripping with _her_. She’s like a wet fucking paradise and he wants nothing more than to lose himself between her legs.

But he wants to hear her answer him just a tad bit more.

“Tell me,” he rasps. “Tell me you want this. ‘Cause if you do-” He lowers his lips to her breast, sucking at it, cupping the underside and envisioning it swelling beneath his fingers even now, against all sense, against all reason. “You won’t have to close your damn legs, I’ll keep you in this bed for days. I’ll have you all night, again. Again. You’re gonna fucking overflow when I’m done. And when you walk around with me, down the street, and everyone sees you… Huge. Mine. They’ll all _know_ you’re mine. You’re gonna be so fucking mine, Laurel – you’re gonna be so fucking _hot_.”

She stops whimpering beneath him, for a moment. Goes rigid. The fear that he’s made a misstep comes fading gradually into his mind, slogging through the haze of his desire which clouds everything, loosens his tongue.

Then, in the blink of an eye, she surges.

She comes raging like the gale force winds of a hurricane, and Laurel flips their positions, pinning him down and straddling him as easily as he’d taken her into his arms. He could make this more of a fight than a fuck, if he so desired – but this is something else entirely, anyway, and Frank doesn’t seem to be able to summon up the power to fight her at all, dictate their positions. All he can do is watch from below as she spreads herself over him, limbs agile, almost spiderlike, creeping down his body and grasping his cock, running her tongue along the shaft with a low, triumphant hum. There’s a greed, to the way she licks him, like she can’t get enough of his taste, of her slick all over him. She looks like something he’s never seen before; something words alone can’t capture.

She’s a queen. An empress. A natural phenomenon. A god of a woman. She’s all those things and more, but most of all she’s a _siren_ , and he’s more than happy to jump overboard and break his fucking back on jagged rocks below whenever she calls for him. Loving her is the sweetest agony and most agonizing bliss, and watching her run her tongue over his veined cock almost gives him a legitimate goddamn heart attack, stops his breathing for good.

“You want everyone to see me? Know I’m yours? Fine. But you wanna know something?” she pants, looming over him, victorious. “You’ll be mine, too. They’ll all know, when they look at me, that you’re mine. Every other girl. That you did that to me. That I let you.” She lowers herself over him, and he tries to raise his hand to her breast to reach it, mouthing like an infant, but she pushes him down, holds him almost by the throat. “That you belong to me too.”

This goes both ways, this belonging, that possession, obsession. This is a two-way street. She belongs to him as he belongs to her and he’s never doubted that, not for a single second, and now they’re going to _prove_ it. To the world.

Fuck the world. They’re going to prove it to each other.

When Laurel sinks down onto him, Frank could swear they both go cross-eyed from the sensation, feeling her cunt stretch – stretch like her stomach will stretch, until her skin pulls tight and taut and she can’t hide it anymore, can’t hide what they’ve done, what they’ve created together, that globe of flesh, an entire world contained inside her. The thoughts invade his mind almost subconsciously, floating up from some place deep inside him as she works over him, rolling herself up and down, building her pace. Her breasts bounce with each movement, and he pictures them bigger, too, swollen and heavy with milk. Leaking. Bursting. Unable to be contained by her bras and tight blouses. She’ll grow out of them, too, all those hard angles softening, expanding. _Growing._

He doesn’t know how he’s going to be able to keep his goddamn hands _off_ of her.

He doesn’t know why this stirs him so. It’s fucked up, and he doesn’t care, because _fucked up_ is a societal convention they’ve never abided by, a label they’ve never allowed to shame them. This is biology, the basest, most human instincts driving them, and he’s never loved her more, as he flips them back over and sinks into her again, his come swelling like magma in his balls, pent-up, pressurized.

He looks her in the eyes, holds her gaze as he ruts hard and hot between her thighs, kissing a string of groans and growls into her mouth and listening to them mingle with her own until they become some sort of peculiar perfect harmony. He can feel her building, tensing, bending underneath the tide of pleasure until she feels like she just might break. This is a promise, what they’re doing. A commitment; stronger than any band of gold. This is their bodies, their flesh.

He places his hand on her stomach. Swears he can feel it beginning to enlarge beneath his palm, against all logic and sense, that seed planted inside her taking root. He thinks about holding her down, cradling that hard little swell, fucking into her, knowing that they’re together forever, inside her. No take backs. No walking away. This is it.

He’s barely aware she’s speaking at all until he feels Laurel reaching down, grabbing at his hips, palming his ass. Her own hips are bucking wildly, and she seems almost to be trying to tug him closer, pull him deeper inside her, letting loose a litany of _oh God do it, come inside me, fuck, I wanna feel it, I wanna take it_ – or maybe it’s not even that. Maybe he’s hearing things. Maybe he’s losing his grip on reality, no longer sure what there is separating their bodies; no condom to dull the sensation of her cunt around him, all of her closing in around all of him. He’s so deep inside her he can almost feel her heart beating on his cock.

Imagines another tiny heart beating in tandem with hers.

It’s like a damn religious experience, having her bare. It feels like he’s coming out of his body, watching himself in another life, and before Frank knows it he’s coming in the literal sense, bursting inside her with a sound like a sob, pouring himself into her and feeling her take in every last drop, greedy, insatiable. The thought that maybe it’s happening even now, right this second, that he could be giving her his child right _now_ , only makes him come harder, until he sees stars. He wants to see that. Wants to _do_ that to her. Wants her on her hands and knees on this bed, belly hanging low, an elegant curve into her pelvis. Wants to lay her out and look at her, every single inch, naked and pregnant and resplendent, all because of him. Wants to do that to her as many times as she’ll fucking let him.

“Oh – yes, fuck yes, I, _oh_ -”

He may be only barely aware of what he’s doing, his mind bombarded with too much sensory data to process, but thankfully Frank still has enough presence of mind remaining to reach down into the space between their bodies, working her clit until Laurel is clenching around him, her cunt quivering, so deliciously open and unprotected and seeded with him. He wonders if she’s picturing it, too; what she’ll look like when he’s done with her. If it turns her on like it does him.

Once he’s come back to himself, Frank pulls away, rolling back onto his knees, taking in the sight of her, astounded. Laurel lets her legs stretch out to their full length when he does, reaching one hand down, playing idly with her cunt, and his breath locks in his throat when he sees his come dribbling out of her, milk-white, leaking down the crack of her ass, onto the sheets. Laurel dips her fingers into it, eyes locked on his like she knows _precisely_ what the fuck she’s doing to him, and massages it up, over her clit, spreading it across her folds and giving a content little hum, clearly not about to waste a single drop. He considers cupping his hand over her, as if to keep it all inside, fill her with it – but he can’t remember how to move, not really, so he just gapes.

He wants to fuck her all over again. And he would, if it weren’t for goddamn refractory periods, so Frank settles for falling down at her side, instead, curling himself around her, hands going for her stomach almost instantaneously. It doesn’t feel like settling for anything, though, just lying there, holding her, breathing in the heavy stench of sex and sweat and something far more primal, like the very beginnings of life itself. Like the first tiny organism in that giant sea of life as it formed, grew larger, joined together, billions upon billions of years ago. Became something living. Something powerful. He pictures all that happening now, happening inside her, the smallest cells coalescing, combining, multiplying, a million heartbeats, a million fractured pieces of them.

He’s so amazed he can’t capture any of what he’s feeling in words. So he doesn’t try. He may talk too much most of the time but he’s good at being silent when it’s right to be silent, and this is right. This is _so_ indescribably right.

“You’ve never… _Wow_ ,” Laurel manages to choke out. “You’ve… never fucked me like that, before.”

He presses a protective hand to her stomach, that flat, toned plane, nuzzling her neck. “Think I hit gold?”

Laurel laughs. “I’m not pregnant yet – that’s not how it works.”

“Fuck, you got any idea how hot you’re gonna look? You’re gonna be so beautiful. Goddamn _perfect_ ,” he says, half-teasing, half-not. He nips at her neck, savoring the resulting squeal he pulls from her lungs, and after a moment he pulls back, just in time to see doubt flicker in her eyes.

“You think I will?”

“I know you will,” he urges, bewildered that she could ever think herself undesirable to him, anything less than beyond beautiful. “I’m not gonna be able to keep my hands off you. My baby mama…”

“Oh, my God, Frank do _not_ call me that,” she protests, good-naturedly.

“What? You’re gonna be my lil baby mama. What’s wrong with me callin’ you that?”

“I swear, I’ll break up with you before this kid is even a _zygote_ if you don’t cut it out-”

Laurel tries to roll over away from him, but he catches her easily, and they dissolve into a fit of near-hysterical laughter, until he has her pinned beneath him once more and they sober up. He reaches out, tucking a stand of sweaty hair behind her ear, marveling at her, at what she’s let him do. At what she’s decided she wants to do _with_ him. He’s unworthy, undeserving, but she sees something worthy in him, and he’ll never know how. He’ll never properly understand it.

All he can do is be grateful she does.

“I want this,” he says, suddenly, no laughter on his lips, just sincerity, “with you.”

This. A family. A new beginning, for both of them, after their own independent childhood hells. They can do this – and it’s not going to be easy, he’s not deluded enough to think that. The same way loving each other is a choice, so this will be, too, and he’ll choose her like he always does, choose their child. Just like neither of them have ever had proper homes, neither of them have ever had proper families, either.

She won’t make the mistakes of her father. He won’t make the mistakes of his. They’ll make their own completely unique mistakes. And that’s okay. If they love each other, if they do this right, they can afford a few mistakes.

“I want this with you too,” she tells him, softly, smoothing a finger across his beard, and it’s not an _I love you_ , not in those explicit words, at least, but to him it might as well be.

He falls asleep with one hand on her stomach. It’s still flat, beneath his large palm, but he dreams of it growing, brimming with new life, with future and promise and possibility. The past is the past. The past is long dead.

He can see the future on the horizon, now, ascending like a sunrise. He can see the future in her.


End file.
